photo by gavinandrewstewart
(In case you are wondering, yes. Yes, you should absolutely sing today's title to the tune of We Need A Little Christmas.)
In the comments on the holiday anxiety post, several of you asked what do we do with Christmas after we've read Radical? How do radicals celebrate the birth of Christ, our Savior? Can we possibly do anything other than slouch towards Bethlehem, caught up and pushed along by the cultural norms of excessive consumption and consumerism, of frantic calendars and sloshy office parties, of weeks of whirlwind that leave us exhausted but far from fulfilled?
And I'm here to tell you that I have no answer for that.
But I do have some ideas.
And it's going to involve (you guessed it) tension.
I'll invite you in to my place of tension, and I welcome you sharing yours.
In Jesus for President, there is a section on living as Cultural Refugees. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw talk about living as "people of the exodus," seeking not to offer a better empire but rather building a new society, a "strange and upside-down empire." In that section, they write:
Consider the Amish, who understand well what it means to be a "colony of heaven," people who are living as strangers in a foreign land, resident aliens on the earth. It's easy to imagine the questions of young Amish children growing up: "Mom, why can't we have an Xbox?" "Dad, why do we dress like this?" "Why don't we have cars?" You can almost hear the parents explain, "Other children may do those things, but you are special. You are different: you are Amish. You have a different story and live in a different way from other people in this world." Christianity is an invitation to be part of an alien people. (238) (emphasis mine)
The radical, the idealist within me rises to this paragraph. We are different. We are a people called out, and we should be known for our peculiarity.
But we ENFPs, we are both empathetic and egalitarian to a fault. And so when it comes to the impact of the choices we make and how they will affect our children, their childhoods, I stutter on my propensity for the radical.
Because there is still this part of me that wraps my arms around the Christmases of my own childhood and hisses through clenched teeth, tears in eyes: "But this was magical! And wonderful! The toy catalogs and the letters to Santa. The laying in bed listening for the jingling of bells on a sleigh. The presents. The presents! Wrapping paper and new toys and carrots and cookies with mysterious bite marks. Stockings stuffed and wishes granted. Who are you to deny your children of this? What gives you the right to mess up Christmas for your children?"
Who, indeed.
The Christmases of my childhood were exceedingly wonderful and magical. Oh, I loved it so. But not a bit of it looked in any way peculiar or different. It was the Christmas of the Empire.
And it was not without it's darker moments, too: the little bouts of blue and depression that followed Christmas Day when we all sank, deflated, back to winter-chilled reality; the way no matter how generous my parents had been with gifts, I always felt I had to exaggerate (okay, flat-out lie) to my friends about the number of presents I had received; the way the novelty of new wore off so quickly, leaving in its space that familiar craving for more.
This is my tension this year: how do I live radically and set apart while crafting my children's experience of Christmas?
By His grace, others come alongside:
- We're doing a Jesse Tree for the very first time this year, and every single morning, the girls and I gather to read Scripture, discuss, pray, and place the day's ornament on the tree. Every moment of Scripture moves toward Christ, and I am thankful for Ann Voskamp's guidance in our journey toward Him. I know that the girls will know Him each day.
- I read the entries at the Christmas Change blog, loving what Laura wrote about Offering, and I look forward to reading the thoughts of others. (You can add your link, too, the way I am adding this one.)
- I listen in on conversations all around the world via this web, and I think about the growing Advent Conspiracy.
So right now, we press through the tension. We don't yet know how to Change Big, so we Change Small. Our hearts are on the peculiar. We know the fullness of the Godhead bodily will eventually crowd out the trappings of the Empire, and so we start each day opening ourselves to Him. We'll just have to trust, I suppose, that whatever way Christmas is shaped for our children, they'll grow up knowing our hearts were always in the right place: in Bethlehem, whispering with the angels and the shepherds Hosanna - God Save.
